


13 Days of Halloween - Black Cats

by BleedingInk



Series: Halloween Challenge [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, F/M, Violence, human!Meg, past abusive relationship, shifter!Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5057653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By their very nature, shapeshifters are usually nomadic creatures, but Castiel feels at ease being Meg's pet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	13 Days of Halloween - Black Cats

Castiel ran as fast as his paws allowed him to. His little heart was about to jump out of his chest, and he wasn’t entirely certain where he was anymore. He could still hear the children’s footsteps coming behind him, their manic laughter as they commented what they were going do to him when they caught him.

“Let’s hang him!” he had heard of them suggest. “Let’s see how long he lasts!”

That had been the point when Castiel had scratched the boy that had caught him and made a dashing escape.

Goddammit, he hated Halloween. There were always demented children trying to kill black cats in the most sadistic manner. If his powers had been in full swing, avoiding them completely would have been as easy as adopting his human form and walking away. But sadly, that was not an option that week.

And on the first day of the cycle too. Castiel couldn’t have had a worse luck.

He halted when he saw one of the kids turn around the corner. There weren’t many options: another of the truants was behind him, and the street was too full of cars to cross it safely. The only option he had was to retreat into the alleyway and hope he’d be able to climb the wall as fast as he could.

Well, that, of course, would have been the logical option, but logic wasn’t in charge of Castiel’s brain anymore. As he grew aware of the danger, the panic had given free rein to his feline instincts. So when he saw an opening between the wall and the trashcan, his first reaction was to hide in it, without realizing that he was effectively cornering himself by doing so.

The children, as sadistic and bloodthirsty as they were, still were smarter than that.

“I think we can fish him out…”

Castiel’s back bristled as the three future murderers approached his hiding spot. Well, if he was going to die, he would make sure to leave as many scratches on them as he could. A hand descended towards him, and he took a swipe at it. The boy wasn’t fast enough, so Castiel’s claws sank in his meat and he was rewarded with a howl of pain.

“Fuck this,” the boy said. “That cat is crazy. Let’s use the rope…”

“What are you three doing?” a female voice boomed on the alley.

Muttered curses and the sound of steps running away. Castiel remained alert. This could be a whole new threat he hadn’t counted on.

The woman kneeled next to the opening to look at him.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” she called him. “Did those assholes scared you?”

Castiel looked at her with suspicion and curiosity. She had wavy, long hair framing her round face and a little smirk in her full lips. She had a groceries bag hanging from her arm that she carefully placed down.

“It’s fine,” she continued. “They’re gone now.”

Castiel stayed exactly where he was, refusing to move. When the woman tried stretching her hands towards him, he hissed at her.

“Okay,” she said, moving her away immediately. “Not in the mood, are we?”

Castiel would have loved to tell her that she wouldn’t be “in the mood” either if her life had just been threatened by a group of sociopathic kids that would probably grow up to be serial killers. The best he managed was what he hoped was a threatening meow.

The woman wasn’t fazed. She fished something out of her plastic bag, opened it and left it close enough for Castiel to see, but far enough for him to ignore if he wanted to.

“I’m going to leave now,” she informed him, as if she knew Castiel could understand her. “Enjoy your dinner.”

And just like she promised, she stood and walked away.

Castiel still waited until her steps had faded in the distance to leave his spot and inspect what she’d left him. The scent milk cream tingled in his nose and his stomach rumbled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and maybe that was why he’d had such a hard time outrunning those kids.

In any case, he thought as he started to lick the cream, there were other ways to protect himself during those times of need.

 

* * *

 

Meg was juggling with the bags and the keys when the bushes beside her moved. She stifled, only now remembering her pepper spray was still in the car, but the shadow that came out and jumped on her porch was too small to be considered a threat.

The black cat stood at her feet, meowing to call her attention.

“Hey, there,” Meg greeted him, leaning as she waited for her heart to stop pounding like that. “It seems it’s a day of black cats, huh?”

The cat rubbed his head against her hand and looked up at Meg with strangely big blue eyes. Meg startled again. The cat she had seen in the alley also had eyes like those.

“Did you follow me home?” she asked him, and tentatively scratched him behind the ears. The cat closed his eyes and purred with content. “Alright, I guess you can come in,” Meg said, finally managing to get her keys right. “I’m making chicken.”

The cat stepped inside the house and stared at his surroundings attentively. When Meg moved to leave the groceries in the kitchen, he followed her there and jumped on the counter.

“Oh, no, no,” Meg grimaced. “Get down. Come on.”

The cat simply stared at her with his head slightly tilted, like he understood Meg’s instructions, but had absolutely no intentions of following them. Meg grabbed him by the skin of the neck and put him down on the floor again. By the time she had turned around to prepare the chicken, the cat was back on the counter, looking at her with amusement.

“Ah, so you’re one of those cats,” Meg said, rolling her eyes.

She put him down again, and the cat decided it was a good idea to explore this new territory. By the time Meg had put the chicken in the oven and went to check on what he was doing, he’d rubbed himself all over the couch, if the black hairs were any indications.

“Really? This is how you pay my hospitality?”

The cat made a ball of himself over one of the pillows. Meg could practically imagine him humming “I think I’m gonna like it here” to himself.

“You’re lucky you’re so cute,” she sighed, scratching his ears again. “Bet whoever lost you is very worried, huh?”

The cat let out an interrogative meow.

Meg went to look for his laptop. It wasn’t hard to find the Facebook page for lost and found animals for her neighborhood. It was surprising to see how many people had poodles around those parts and how systematically they lost them. Or maybe it was the same person who had a lot of them. In any case, there were only a pair of cats: a tabby and an orange one.

“Maybe they haven’t noticed you’re gone yet,” Meg commented to the cat, who had jumped on the table to spy on what she was doing. “I bet you go out on adventures a lot, huh?”

The cat jut lifted his blue eyes at her and proceeded to cuddle up with the laptop. Meg found herself smiling. That cat seemed smart and friendly, and she really hoped karma was coming for the kids that had tried to kill him.

The oven clock announced her chicken was ready. She took it out of the oven and cut some pieces to share with her new furry friend.

“Listen, you can’t stay here,” she told him, as she put a plate for him on the floor. “If I can’t find who owns you, I’m taking you to an animal shelter. One that doesn’t kill its guests, I promise.”

She could have sworn she saw the purest skepticism in the cat’s face.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Meg discovered about the cat was that he clearly didn’t believe in personal space: he followed her around the house, rubbed himself against her legs while she was cooking, cuddled up to her when she was on the couch or jumped to her lap when she was sitting in her desk grading test. And even though she had provided him with a perfectly comfortable box, he still chose to jump on the bed with her while she was asleep.

After she woke up to the cat resting over her chest or her backs two mornings in a row, she accepted that he was now part of her life.

“Ugh, fine,” she said, when the cat jumped on the couch to watch television with her. “They’ve always told me that I was gonna end up a crazy cat lady. I might as well start my collection with you.”

The cat rolled over his stomach for Meg to scratch him.

So on the third day, she put the cat in the box to drive him to the vet. He protested and tried to scratch her, but Meg couldn’t really hold it against him. She too hated vaccines when she was a little kid.

Doctor Amelia Richardson examined him and declared him a perfectly healthy, flee-free three-years-old cat.

“And you say you find him in an alleyway?” she asked. “That’s strange. Feral cats aren’t usually this friendly.”

The cat had jumped to Meg’s arms the moment the vet had let go of him, and he was now groaning and sinking his claws into Meg’s shoulder in a way that clearly meant _“Can we go home now?”_

“In any case, not many people adopt black cats because of that stupid superstition,” Dr. Richardson continued. “I’m glad you decided to keep him.”

“Yeah… I think it was kind of the other way around, actually,” Meg commented, as she tried to pry the cat away from her and back on the examining table so the vet could give him his shots.

So Meg returned from that excursion with several cans of cat food, a litter box, a bag of catnip, some toys and a couple of pamphlets on neutering and declawing that Dr. Richardson recommended she read before deciding if that was right for her new furry friend.

“… I’m sorry, I don’t feel comfortable calling him that,” the vet had said, even though Meg thought it was pretty funny. “Maybe consider getting him an actual name?”

“I could just call you Cat,” Meg commented to him later, when they were both on the couch zapping through channels. “That would certainly simplify things.”

The cat moved an ear, in what seemed like the feline equivalent of crooking an eyebrow.

“Or maybe I could take you to school,” Meg continued. “Let the little rioters pick a name for you. They’ll probably choose something ridiculous, like Mr. Pawsies, or Captain Catmerica.”

The cat meowed and moved away from Meg, like the very idea terrified him.

“Okay, maybe not,” Meg laughed. “Do you have any suggestions?”

The cat stared at her for some time, before he jumped out of the couch and started climbing Meg’s shelves.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Meg fretted, standing up. “Stop!”

The cat sank his claws in one of her books, and pulled from it until both of them fell of the shelf. He landed on his feet, of course, and the book fell open in an illustration of Archangel Michael slaying a demon. Meg picked up the book, pensively staring at the image.

“Michael?”

The cat tilted his head. _“Try again.”_

“Angel?” Meg suggested, before shaking her head. “No, that’s super pretentious. How about… Clarence?”

She was pretty certain that was the name of an angel from some movie or the other, but she couldn’t remember exactly which one. In any case, the cat blinked at her, so she took that as an accepting sign.

“Clarence it is,” Meg said, and picked him up so they could continue watching TV.

 

* * *

 

Castiel promised himself he was going to leave after the new moon cycle was over and he could recover his human form, but new moon cycle passed, and he was still lazying around Meg’s living room. He was just so comfortable there. The house and its furniture was a little old-fashioned, was much bigger than his one-bedroom apartment, he had food every day instead of chewing on whatever unhealthy shit was in his refrigerator, and his bed was fluffy and placed strategically under the window so he could have maximum sunlight enjoyment. He was taking the best naps of his life.

And besides, he had taken an unexpected liking to Meg. Not only had she saved him from those awful kids and opened her house to him, she also gave the best back rubs and ear scratches, and played with him when she considered he had been sleeping too long. If he had been a full time cat, he couldn’t imagine having a better owner.

But despite Meg’s warmness to him, he couldn’t help but to notice how lonely she was. She worked as a teacher, and she seemed to do little else but go to work, come back home, grade tests, watch TV or read a book. She went out running three times a week, but she didn’t stop to make small talk with the neighbors. She never had friends over. And she didn’t seem to have a boyfriend.

Castiel had found male clothes in some boxes shoved carelessly in the closet of the guest room. (He didn’t really feel bad for spying. There was not much else to do while Meg wasn’t home.) There were pictures in her computer inside the folder titled “Dad + Tom + Me”, in which she was shown with an older man with strange yellow eyes (her father, he deduced) and a man who seemed to be about the same age, in special occasions, like cutting a turkey on Thanksgiving or blowing up the candles on a cake. Maybe the clothes belonged to one of them.

Somehow, he doubted it.

In any case, Meg seemed to like having him there as well. She talked to him like he was a person: she complained about Principal Crowley, she told him hot gossips about her fellow teachers, and she mocked the overprotective parents of her students who didn’t want her to teach _The Catcher in the Rye_. Sometimes Castiel felt compelled to answer (he wanted to say, for example, that he really liked that book) but he usually forgot he was in feline form, so what came out of his mouth was a usually prolonged, rough meowing. Judging by her laughter and the way she petted him, she found it funny.

So in the end, Castiel decided to stay. Shape-shifters were, by their very nature, nomadic creatures and it was rare that one of them decided to settle anywhere. But he was definitely happy there; happier than he remembered being in a long while, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make. He rubbed his smell all over the house and all over Meg to ward off both other cats and other shifters, and he carefully and thoroughly destroyed the pamphlets about neutering and declawing. Yes, he was ready to be a lazy housecat for a long while.

And that was about the time the calls started happening.

He was taking his third nap of the day when the phone rang, very rudely waking him up. He frowned at it until the answering machine kicked in.

“Hey, it’s me,” said a male voice. “Tom gave me your number. I hope you don’t mind. Listen, there are a couple of things we need to talk about. Call me; I haven’t changed my number.”

The message ended. Castiel closed his eyes and resumed his nap peacefully for the following three hours. At which point, the guy called again.

“It’s me again. Sorry, I know you’re mad, Meg, but you can’t just leave everything behind. Please, let’s just… try and make it right this time. I’m sure we can do it. Anyway, call me.”

Castiel huffed. And who exactly was this asshole? Anyway, he was up now, he might as well go disturb the birds in the yard. That was always a fun activity.

He returned to the house in time to hear the last of the messages:

“… I seriously think we need to talk face to face, but… just call me, okay?”

Castiel wasn’t an expert in human conventions by a long shot, but he was pretty certain that all those messages weren’t necessary.

“Hey, Clarence,” Meg greeted him when she got home that day. Castiel rubbed against her leg and let her pick him up. “Huh, you didn’t even bother to pick up the phone, did you? Useless cat…” she commented humorously as she pressed the red button to listen to the messages.

“Hey, it’s me…”

Meg dropped him. Castiel landed on his feet, but still, he let out a hiss of protest by the suddenness. When he turned to look at Meg, she was pale and rapidly pressing the buttons to erase all the messages. She stood by the phone table, breathing in deeply for a moment, and then picked up the phone. She pressed every button like they had personally insulted her. Castiel would have found it funny if she hadn’t been so clearly upset.

“Tom, what the hell?” she shouted when the picked up on the other end. “What part of _‘I don’t want to see the guy ever again that’s why I’m moving halfway across the country and cutting ties with everyone I knew’_ you didn’t get? I don’t care! I don’t care if he’s your buddy, I don’t care how much he moped and insisted! I’m your sister, you’re supposed to be on my side… what the fuck do you mean you don’t know what to believe?!”

She continued berating the Tom person for a very long time. After she hanged up with more strength that it was necessary, she went straight to the refrigerator, took out a can of beer and gulped down half of it without breathing. When she put it down, she seemed to be fighting against the tears.

Castiel jumped to the counter next to her and rubbed his face against her cheek. He didn’t know what else to do, short of turning into a human and asking her what was wrong. He didn’t think she’d react well to that in that precise moment.

Meg put a hand on his head, breathing in deeply.

“Oh, Clarence,” she muttered. “You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with crappy exes.”

Never in all the time he spent there had Castiel wished more to actually talk to her. To tell her that some shifters arranged marriages between their offspring to assure the purity of certain bloodlines, that he himself had narrowly escaped one of those unions once. To tell her that maybe he didn’t understand everything that she was going through, but that he considered her a friend and she could count on him to try and understand…

Meg picked him up again and went upstairs with him. She took out the mysterious box of clothes, and opened it. She moved the clothes aside and took out something Castiel hadn’t noticed before: a brown envelope. She finished the rest of her beer before spreading its content on the bed.

The pictures showed her hanging by the arm of a blonde haired man with grey eyes, or smiling at the camera cheek to cheek with him, or them in the middle of a larger group of friends. There was one in which they were holding hands and very obviously showing them off to the camera. There was a ring with a large diamond rock in Meg’s finger. Someone (Castiel suspected Meg) had drawn a heart around it and written the words “Meg + Luc” inside it.

It looked strange, for some reason. Castiel had seen Meg smile, and he had seen other pictures of her smiling. She looked different in these ones, like she had stretched her mouth, but her eyes remained dark, sad.

“Love of my life,” Meg commented bitterly. “Biggest asshole on the planet. You know, it’s not like he ever hit me or anything, but that would have been easier to explain to all the people who were like: _‘Oh, but why did you break up? You looked so cute together!’_ ”

She laughed bitterly and laid down against the pillows.

“I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” she sighed. “The jealousy, the control… he demanded I texted him wherever I was and to detail what I was doing. Do you know what that’s like? Probably not, ‘cause you’re a cat,” she giggled, scratching Castiel’s years. “I felt like I was drowning and I needed to get out of the water. Maybe if I had stayed he would have hit me, eventually, if I had married him,” she reflected. “Anyway, I was lucky Granny died and left me the house, huh?”

Castiel meowed and rubbed himself against her. It was all the consolation he could offer.

“You’re such a great listener, Clarence,” she sighed.

She pushed the pictures out of the bed and moved the blankets aside. Five minutes later, she was sleeping without even brushing her teeth. Castiel rested by her side, looking at the clear night outside and plotting.

 

* * *

 

The calls kept coming, of course, because a man like Luc didn’t give up easily. At first they kept the begging tone (“Please call me back, we need to talk, we had a good thing going…”) once or twice a week, but they started getting progressively angrier (“Look, you’re being a bitch right now, can you just call me back? I know you kept some of my things…”) until finally they became downright rude and daily (“You’re a whore! You wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up and throat-crammed you, nobody will love you because you’re such a…”)

Meg didn’t listen to any of those messages. Castiel systematically deleted them: he just took his human form, pressed some buttons, and just like that, it was like it had never happened. Of course, he realized that wasn’t the best course of action to make Luc stop calling, but this way, Meg didn’t have to get upset about them, drink a beer and go to bed without brushing her teeth.

Castiel didn’t know how or when he had become so protective of her. It was almost an instinctive thing, primal: she was his human, and he was going to do everything in his power to keep her safe.

So he deleted the messages. It worked just fine for some weeks, but the new moon cycle was nearing, so he wouldn’t be able to turn into a human and keep doing that. He had tried doing it with his paws to practice, but he had ended up knocking the phone down instead. He’d have to come up with something else.

Luc called, like clockwork, exactly half an hour after Meg left for the school. Castiel was certain that he knew the hours she kept and he called when she wasn’t home so he could scream at the answering machine without having to actually deal with Meg shouting back at him. He also never called on weekends, when they could have certainly had an actual conversation, like he kept insisting he wanted. It was cowardly and childish. And it ended today.

Castiel let the phone rang two times before picking up.

“Hello?”

There was a stunned silence on the other side of the line, like whoever was calling (and Castiel knew pretty well who it was) had not been expecting that.

“Uhm, yes, hello,” Luc answered. “I was calling… is Meg home?”

Castiel had become familiar with the different tones in his voice, and this was the mellow, educated tone he’d used on the earlier calls.

“No, she is not home,” he answered. “And we would really appreciate it if you didn’t call again.”

The stunned silence returned, and Castiel just waited patiently.

“I’m sorry, who exactly are you?”

“That’s not of import,” Castiel replied. He didn’t think it was correct to claim the title of Meg’s boyfriend when he was actually her pet, but there was no harm done in letting Luc reach that conclusion for himself. “What matters is Meg doesn’t want to talk to you. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. She’s moved on. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Castiel could practically hear him gritting his teeth.

“Yes,” he said in the end, in what sounded more like a grumble than a word.

“Good. I hope we don’t have a problem with this.”

He hung up before Luc could even muster an answer. He almost expected the phone to ring again and Luc to insult him the way he had insulted Meg, but apparently Castiel had thrown him off balance, and the rest of the day was quiet.

So were the three following days. Castiel had to admit, he had never enjoyed being a full time cat more.

“I wonder whatever happened to Luc,” Meg said out loud while they were in the couch watching a nature documentary on panthers. “He’s not the kind to call just once. Maybe Tom told him to cut it off.”

Castiel jumped on the carpet and adopted the same position as the panther on the TV to distract her. Meg laughed so hard she apparently forgot about Luc for that night.

And that was all Castiel could have wished for.

 

* * *

 

Meg was coming home late that Friday night after a visit to the pet shop and the grocery store. Not that anyone was waiting for her at home, obviously. Well, no one except Clarence. She had bought him a little sweater with a ridiculous Christmas tree in it, and she was going to make him wear it and take a picture of him. That was going to be her Christmas card that year, and she couldn’t care less that it was going to make her look like a crazy cat lady in the making.

It was strange how attached she had become to the cat. She had been a dog person her entire life, half convinced that cats were basically Lord Voldemort incarnated. But Clarence had made his way into her heart, always standing near her, coming out to receive her when she got home. He listened to her as if he could understand what she was telling him, and sometimes, Meg thought she saw a glimmer of human intelligence in his eyes.

Of course, that could be a symptom that she needed to start interacting with people and dating again. She would think about it after New Year’s Eve. For now, she had a quiet night ahead of cuddling with her cat and watching a movie.

She was so excited about it she didn’t even noticed the front window was open.

“Clarence?” she called, as she juggled with her boxes. “Come here, kitten. I’ve got something for…”

The words got caught in her mouth, and the bags slipped from her fingers.

Luc was sitting in her living room, his grey eyes staring at her coldly.

“Hello, Meg,” he said, in a whisper that sent a shiver down her spine.

It took Meg a couple of seconds to recover her voice, and when she did, she spoke with a mixture of confusion and anger:

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. And then: “What did you do to my cat?”

“I locked him up in the bathroom upstairs,” Luc replied with a shrug. “But it’s not your stupid cat you should be worried about right now.”

Meg stared right back at him, defiantly, but beneath her bravado her thoughts were raging. Should she call for help? Should she run out of the house? But Clarence was upstairs, what if Luc took it out on him? She couldn’t…

“Where is he?” Luc demanded to know, taking a step towards her.

Meg backed down until she was near the door, her fingertips on top of the doorknob.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

Luc basically lunged himself at her, so close now she could see the little veins in the white of his eye, the rancid smell of alcohol in his breath made Meg cringe. She had thought she might be able to talk him into leaving the house, but if he was drunk…

“The guy!” Luc howled in her face. “Where is the guy you’ve been seeing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meg said, truthfully. “I’m not dating anyone.”

But she knew it was futile: if Luc was convinced she had a new boyfriend, nothing she said or did was going to get him to change his mind.

Right on cue, he pointed an accusatory finger at her:

“You’re protecting him,” he said. “You’re protecting him because you know what I’m gonna do to him when I get him…”

“You are not going to do anything!” Meg said, grabbing the doorknob with more strength. “I’m going to call the cops, because you’re not welcomed here!”

She tried opening the door, but she didn’t move fast enough. Luc grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back with enough force to make her lose her balance. She landed on the carpet, her heart pounding and her mind blank with panic. She tried to get up, but Luc grabbed her by the neck.

“You’re going to tell me who he is,” he demanded, as he sank his thumbs on Meg’s throat. “You’re going to tell me where he is and what he does. You’re going to tell me how you met him, how he fucks you, and everything else about him. And once to tell me all of that, you’re going to make him come here, and we’re going to have a little talk. A man to man talk. Do you understand?”

He let go off her. Meg fell on her hands and knees, gasping for air and blinking to try make the black spots in her eyes disappeared.

“Now, start talking, bitch.”

Meg hanged onto the carpet, trying to think fast. He didn’t believe the truth, so she needed to start lying. She needed to gain some time.

“Okay…” she coughed. “Okay… his… his name is… Angel…”

A foot impacted against her ribs, knocking out what little air she had managed to breathe in and making her fall on her side.

“I knew it, you lying whore!” Luc shouted, furious. “I knew it!”

Meg laid on a fetal position, her vision blurry from the tears of pain and anger. Her purse was on the floor in front of her, if she could just reach out and take her cellphone out…

Luc kneeled next to her, grabbing a handful of her hair again.

“Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me how you…”

He let out a sudden moan, and his cruel grip disappeared. Meg wasn’t exactly sure what happened, but there was a loud sound of a glass shattering. She stood up and turned around as fast as her trembling legs allowed her to.

There was a naked man in her living room. A naked man with black hair, holding a piece of broken glass of what used to be her flower vase was standing right in front of her. Luc was at his feet, with a side of his head bloody, and his grey eyes empty, his chest unmoving.

The naked stranger took a step towards her.

“Meg, are you hurt?” he asked with a deep, gruff voice.

“What the fuck?!” Meg shouted, because that was the only coherent thought in her mind. “How the hell…? Who…? Don’t come any closer!”

“Meg,” he called her again, but he stayed right where he was without taking another step. “Meg, please. I’m sorry…”

He put the broken glass down and raised his hands to show her he meant no harm. Meg would have screamed or run out of the house (while screaming) anyway, but then she noticed his eyes.

There were blue and bright and were fixed on her, begging her to understand.

It was impossible. But deep inside her, she knew it.

“Clarence?”

 

* * *

 

Castiel was pretty certain that Meg was going to pass out, but she was on her third beer and she still looked pretty solid.

“So you’re a werecat,” she said.

“The term is shape-shifter…”

“You’re affected by the moon, you live partially as a cat and partially as a man,” Meg pointed out and took another long swig of her beer. “You are a werecat.”

Castiel decided it was best not to insist on the contrary. Meg was pretty upset as it was, even after he had put on clothes as she’d requested.

“You’ve been living in my house, eating my food, sleeping in my bed!” she had pointed out when Castiel argued he didn’t feel comfortable wearing clothes. “And now you’ve killed my ex-boyfriend…!”

“I was trying to defend you!”

“I don’t _care_! You’re putting some pants on _right this instant_ or so help me…!”

Luckily for him, Luc had been almost his same size. Oh, he hadn’t taken the clothes of the corpse, of course, but the ones Meg had kept in the box: a pair of jeans and a red hoodie that were all itchy. Or maybe it was that Castiel wasn’t used to them.

But Meg had apparently calmed down after seeing him dressed and drinking two cans of beer. Enough that they could have a conversation and Castiel could explain what he was.

And also apologize for living in her house under false pretense.

And for killing her ex-boyfriend.

“And for sleeping in my bed.”

“And for sleeping in your bed, yes,” Castiel nodded. For some reason that seemed to be a lot worse in Meg’s eyes than the fact he had just murdered a person. Granted, she didn’t have a high opinion of Luc and he was trying to hurt her, but still…

Meg finished her beer in one long swig.

“Okay,” she said, crushing the can. “First things first. You’re going to help me clean this mess.”

“Of course.”

Meg kept staring at him, like she was waiting for him to volunteer an idea.

“If you give me some time I can… call some people,” Castiel shrugged.

“Are they _people_?” Meg asked, suspiciously. Castiel was about to explain that it wouldn’t be the first time a shape-shifter killed a human and they had their own way to dealing with that, but she put a hand up in the air. “Forget I asked. I don’t need to know. Just make the call.”

Castiel went to do just that, and when he came back into the kitchen, Meg was opening another can of beer.

“How did you get out of the bathroom?” she asked, staring at him with curiosity.

“I tried busting the lock,” Castiel explained. “But when I couldn’t, I jumped out the window and ran back in through the back door.”

Meg stared at him for a second, and then she burst out laughing uncontrollably. She hugged her sides and slapped the table.

“What’s so funny?” Castiel asked.

“Oh… just… just imagining what Mrs. Carrigan might have thought,” Meg panted. “If she saw a butt naked man running into my house.”

She resumed her laughing, louder this time like she was laughing out all of her tension and her drunkenness as well. Castiel managed to smile and wait until she had finished laughing.

“What did you say you were called again?” she asked finally, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“Castiel.”

She repeated the name under her breath, like she was tasting it.

“No, forget it,” she shook her head. “I’m never going to get used to call you that, Clarence.”

Castiel was incredibly relieved to hear that. It meant that Meg was at least considering keeping him in her life. At least she was not going to run him out of the house right away. And given the circumstances, he couldn’t have asked for more.


End file.
